The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations

Schmidt Number: S-2969

On-line since: 31st May, 2017

Lecture 2

Nationalities and Nationalism in the
Light of Spiritual Science

Berlin,October 31, 1914

Dear friends, once again our thoughts
must first of all be for those who are at the front,
having to meet the challenge of our time with their
bodies and their whole being. Let us therefore direct our
thoughts to the spirits who are protecting the men who
are at the front.

Spirits of your souls, guardian
guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for
those who have already passed through the gate of death
in the course of these events, we say:

Spirits of your souls, guardian
guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And the
spirit we have sought in our endeavours for so many
years, the spirit who went through the Mystery of
Golgotha, the Christ spirit, the spirit of courage, the
spirit of strength, the spirit of unity, the spirit of
peace — may he rule over everything you are asked
to do these days.

More than
at other times the serious purpose of our spiritual
efforts must live in our souls during these days, these
weeks — a seriousness which enables us to be aware
how everything we aim for in our spiritual movement has
to do with all that is truly human. We are aiming for
something that addresses itself not just to human
existence as it is for the moment, an existence that will
pass with human physical body. We are speaking of laws,
of forces in soul and spirit, that directly address the
higher self in man, a higher self which is more than the
self that may wither away with the body and its
existence. We have frequently spoken of
‘Maya’ when referring to outward appearances,
and it has often been stressed that outward appearances,
the processes of physical life, become Maya because man
does not properly penetrate them with his mind, his
perceptive faculties. He therefore does not sense, does
not perceive, what is really significant; the real
essence of the things perceptible to the outer senses.
Man uses his perceptive faculties to draw a veil, a
tissue of deception, over the events of the physical
world. This makes them become Maya.

There is
one particular great truth that we should have in mind
these days as we look for love and understanding, for a
loving comprehension of what is happening all around us
— an insight that, fundamentally speaking, is at
the centre of everything we aim for in spiritual science.
In our day this has to present itself to our souls with
the full gravity and moral weight inherent in it. It is
the realization — and this has by now become the
simplest and most elementary fact in our spiritual
life—that life on earth recurs. The fact that in
the course of time our souls progress from body to body.
The part of man that is eternal hastens from body to body
through man's successive incarnations on earth. On the
other hand, there is the part that has to do with human
existence in a physical body, the part present on the
physical plane that provides the configuration. the
formation, the particular stamp to human existence in an
outer physical body.

One
particular thing that provides the outer stamp,
determining the character of a person as it were, in so
far as he is living in a physical body on the physical
plane, is what may collectively be referred to as
nationality. This is something we should never forget,
especially today. If we turn the mind's eye to what we
call man's higher self, the concept of nationality loses
significance. For when we pass through the gate of death
everything encompassed by the term
‘nationality’ is among the things we cast
off. And if we do in all seriousness want to be what we
think people with spiritual aims should be, it is proper
to remember that in passing through successive
incarnations the human being belongs not to one but to a
number of different nationalities. The part of him that
links him to a particular nationality is among the things
that are cast off, have to be cast off, the moment we
pass through the gate of death.

Truths that
belong to the realm of the eternal do not have to be
easily understood. Indeed, they may well be truths which
at times go against our feelings — truths we
achieve with difficulty particularly in difficult times,
and also find difficult to achieve and retain in their
full strength and clarity in difficult times such as
these. A true anthroposophist must do this, and it will
be exactly in this way that he arrives at a real
understanding of the physical world around him. The basic
elements for such understanding have already been
presented in our anthroposophical work. You will find
that the lecture cycle on folk souls' in a sense contains
everything needed to gain insight into the way human
beings, in so far as they are in the eternal realm, are
connected with their nationalities. Those lectures were
of course given in peacetime when souls are more ready
and prepared to accept objective, unvarnished truths.
Perhaps it will be difficult to take these truths as
objectively today as they could be taken in those days.
Yet this is the very way in which we can prepare our
souls to develop the strength they need today, if even
today we are able to take these truths objectively.

Let us
bring before our mind's eye the picture of a warrior
going through the gate of death on the field of battle.
We need to understand that this is very much a special
case, to go through the gate of death like this. We need
to understand that entrance is made into a world that we
are seeking with every fibre of our souls in spiritual
science, so that it may bring clarity even into physical
life. Let us remember that death means the entrance into
that spiritual world and that it is not possible to take
other life impulses directly into that world, for they
would bear no fruit. The only life impulses we are able
to take there are those that animate the efforts of our
hearts and minds and in the final instance aim to join
all peoples on the earth in brotherhood. Then a simple
popular saying can be seen in a new way in the light of
anthroposophy. It is the proverb which says ‘Death
is the grand leveller’. It makes them all equal
— Frenchmen. Englishmen, Germans and Russians. That
is indeed true. Considering this in relation to what is
going on all around us on the physical plane today, we
shall indeed become aware of the solid ground that
enables us to overcome Maya in this field and look to
events for their essential meaning.

Consider it
in relation to the feelings of antipathy and hatred that
fill the hearts of the peoples of Europe at present.
Consider it in relation to all the things peoples in the
different regions of European soil feel about the others,
expressing it in spoken and written words. And let us
also see in our mind's eye all the antipathy coming to
full fruition in our time.

How should
we see these things with the eye of truth? Where in this
field do we find something that will take us beyond Maya,
beyond the great illusion? We do not get to know about
each other on earth by an approach that considers
everything that is generally human as something abstract.
We get to know one another by getting in a position where
we are able really to understand the peculiar qualities
of the peoples who are spread out over the whole earth,
to understand them in concrete terms, in what they are in
particular. We do not get to know a person in this life
by simply saying: He is a human being like myself and
must have all the same qualities that I have. No, we have
to forget about ourselves and really consider the
qualities of the other person.

In the
lecture cycle on the folk souls I showed how the
different aspects of the soul within us — the
sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul, the
spiritual soul, the ego and the spirit-self — are
distributed among the nations of Europe and how every
nation fundamentally represents a one-sided aspect. I
also said that the different nationalities will have to
work together, to become the soul of Europe as a whole,
just as the different aspects of our own soul need to
work together. Looking at the Italian and the Iberian
peninsulas we find that the national element comes to
expression in the sentient soul. In France, it comes to
expression as intellectual or mind soul. Moving on to the
British Isles we see it coming to expression as spiritual
soul. In Central Europe the national element comes to
expression as ego. When we finally look to the East of
Europe, that is the region where it fully emerges as
spirit-self—though that is not quite the right way
of putting it, as we shall see later. What comes to
expression there is something that lies in the national
character. But the eternal in man goes beyond what is
national and this is what human beings are looking for
when entering more deeply into the spirit. Compared to
this, the national element is a mere garment, an outer
envelope, and the more a person is able to gain insight
into this the higher he will ascend. In so far as man
lives in the physical world, he does live in the outward
trappings of what is national and this gives his body its
configuration and, fundamentally speaking, also provides
the configuration for certain qualities, character
traits.

Today we
see the members of different nations facing one another
in dislike, in hatred. I am not at this point speaking
about what is going on in the combat situation. I am
speaking of what is going on in the feelings, the
passions, of human souls. Here we have a soul. It needs
to prepare for its reception into a spiritual world
through which it will now have to pass between death and
its next birth, a world that will guide it towards an
incarnation that will belong to quite a different
nationality from the one it is now leaving. This is a
fact which shows very clearly, in the best and most
powerful way, how man resists the higher self that is
within him. Consider some real ‘nationalist’
today, someone with national feelings who directs his
antipathy very particularly against the members of
another nation and, indeed, may be ranting and raving
against this other nation in his own country. What is the
meaning of such ranting and raving, of such antipathy? It
signifies a premonition—My next incarnation will be
into this nationality! The higher self has already at
subconscious level established links with the other
nationality. This higher self is resisted by that part of
us which on the physical plane. This is man raging
against his own higher self. Wherever the ranting and
raving is worst, wherever the hatred felt against other
nationalities is greatest and where the most lies are
told about them, someone seeing things not as Maya but in
truth can perceive the true reason, which is that a great
many members of the nation that rages most, is most cruel
in its attitudes and lies the most, will have to assume
that other nationality at their next incarnation.

That is the
full seriousness of what we teach, the moral greatness
that lies behind it. There is much in man — very
much, infinitely much — that wants to resist having
to recognize his higher self, the part of him that is
eternal. This is what makes it so tremendously difficult
to speak objectively at the present time. It certainly is
a strange phenomenon that before this war started
infinitely appreciative comments reached us from England,
appreciative of the German character, German competence
and particularly the intellectual life in Germany. I
attempted to give examples of this in my last public
lecture.5 It is possible to give many more examples, and
this shall also be done. What was going on there?

From the
occult point of view, there had been an instinctive
feeling that an element was being striven for in Central
Europe that had to do with regaining youth — I
spoke of the Faust type of soul in that last public
lecture — a search for the spiritual, preparing for
the spiritual, something the whole of Europe would one
day turn to, truly turn to. This is something people were
instinctively aware of in times gone by. The desire has
been to understand what is going on in Central Europe.
Yet being wholly bound up with the national element, we
shall only be able to relate to this in full
understanding in the life between death and rebirth. Then
it will be possible to relate to this and understand, and
the way will be found to the teachers of Central Europe.
It is embarrassing to speak of this now for it may appear
like boasting in someone who comes from Central Europe.
Yet the objective truths must be told. So there is an
instinctive feeling for something that will be looked for
in the life between death and rebirth: a uniting with
souls that have striven for what is altogether human
— with the Goethe soul, the Schiller soul, the
Fichte soul. [Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814,
German idealist philosopher.] There has been some
awareness of the fact that, having passed through the
gate of death, we shall look above all for the Goethe
soul, the Fichte soul, the Schiller soul and other souls
that had their last incarnation in Central Europe. This
fact had come to expression instinctively, and now once
more, for the last time, infinitely passionate
nationalistic feeling is rising against it. When we
realize that the words so often heard now from the west
and the north west are but covering up this feeling of
resistance we shall have come to understand the truth, to
replace Maya, misconception. We shall then understand how
earth man, having eternal man within him, does not want
what the eternal man within him wants; how the love he
must feel in eternity is in the temporal world
transformed into hatred.

We shall
find that the best way of achieving love in
understanding, and understanding in love, will be to get
to know the characteristics of European peoples' using
the means spiritual science is able to provide. We are
allowed to do so in so far as we are always addressing
the higher self in man. And all who want to share in our
way of thought or feeling will recognize this higher self
and therefore be able to listen to everything that has to
be said with regard to the outer garb, knowing that we
are speaking of the outer garb.

In a
certain sense every nation has its specific mission.
— In due course we shall be able to enter the
building in Dornach and find that the sequence of
columns, their capitals and the architraves above them,
express in their forms what comes to expression in the
impulses we discern in Europe. But I am not going to talk
about this now for it is best to talk about it when we
have the building before our eyes. That is what I did
there a few days ago.
[Note 6]
— If we consider the impression our soul
may gain even without seeing the building, we note above
all that the inhabitants of the southern peninsulas
— Italy and Spain — are, in a way, bringing
back in their modern mission the elements that in the
past had appeared in the third post-Atlantean epoch, in
Egypto-Chaldean civilization. As soon as we grasp this,
we gain a true insight into the soul of an Italian or
Spanish national. This can be traced down to specific
details. It is possible to say that we find in reality
what we have previously perceived in the spirit. What
were the characteristic features of Egypto-Chaldean
civilization? This is something we have spoken of many
times. They had a feeling for the great, cosmic
astrology. Stars and constellations were not seen the way
we see them today. Instead, spiritual entities were
perceived and the constellations were seen as their
physical exterior. The spiritual was seen in everything.
If this is to be repeated as the mission of a nation in
the time after the Mystery of Golgotha it has to be
repeated in such a way that it now is part of the inner
soul — that the great cosmic tableau seen by the
Egyptians and Chaldeans now presents itself as though
born anew out of the soul. This is nowhere more evident
than in Dante's
Divina Comedia,
a work representing the high point of culture on the Italian
peninsula. [Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321.]
Even in details, the elements of ancient Egypto-Chaldean culture emerge
again as though born out of the soul, resurrected in the inner life.

The essence
of Greek culture is today found in the French nation,
down to the character of their leading personalities.
Voltaire [1694–1778] for instance can be understood
only if one compares him to a real Greek. And if you
consider the form Corneille [1606–16841] and
Racine [1639–1699] gave to their works you can see
how they were wrestling with the Greek form. This is of
great significance in the history of civilization. The
struggle with outer form, with what Aristotle
[384–322 BC] established with regard to form, lives
on in Racine and Corneille. If we look to French culture
to find again the culture of the intellectual or mind
soul that set the tone in the fourth post-Atlantean
epoch, we should find what was best in that culture. With
the intellectual or mind soul coming to grips with the
world, we should find exactly what relates to this. The
greatest poet therefore, beyond compare in that respect,
will have to be one whose creative work arises out of the
intellectual or mind soul. A nation achieves greatness
where its incomparables are brought to the fore. And the
French poet who is unsurpassable is Molière
[1622-1673]. With him the French soul reached its true,
characteristic height — there it is unsurpassable.
An echo of this was still alive in Voltaire.

An element
that repeats nothing of the past but belongs to the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch, something that has come up new in
this epoch as it were, is the British soul. The principal
aim of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is to develop the
spiritual soul, to bring it out. The spiritual soul is
particularly in evidence in the essential nature of the
British folk soul. It is characteristic of the British
soul that it faces events. Fourteen, fifteen years ago,
when I was writing the first edition of my
Riddles of Philosophy[Note 7]
I struggled to find a term to describe the British
philosophers and it then became clear to me that they are
onlookers in life. They face things the way the spiritual
soul faces life as an onlooker. And the greatest creative
spirit in the British soul, the man who stood there and
faced the British character traits giving expression to
all of them, down to the very depths of the soul, was
Shakespeare. There the British soul is incomparable, in
the onlooker mode.

Moving on
to Central Europe we find ‘...what is forever
evolving, and never actually is...’ as I have
already described it in the public lecture. It is the
‘I’ as such, the innermost part of man. How
does this relate to the elements of man's soul? It
relates individually to the sentient soul, the
intellectual or mind soul and the spiritual soul,
developing links with all of them. Let us consider this
in the case of Goethe. We note how he longed to go to
Italy. And as it was in his case so all the best minds of
Central Europe always longed for Italy, to achieve
fertilization of the ego and let it conceive from the
sentient soul. And the ego also exchanges forces with the
intellectual or mind soul. Let us try and observe how
that close bond between ego and intellectual or mind soul
has really always been there through the centuries. Note
how Frederick the Great [1712–1786], that most
German of princes, really only spoke and wrote in French,
how he had a special appreciation of French culture. This
is evident, for instance, from his relationship with
Voltaire. We can also note how the German philosopher
Leibniz [1646–1716] wrote his works in French. That
is exactly how the ego relates to the intellectual or
mind soul. And when the ego is from the depths of the
soul seeking the thing it strives for, something pushes
up from the depths of the ego, from unfathomable depths
of the ego: the spiritual soul tries to grasp it. This
can be seen in the case of Goethe. I have often shown how
he tried to grasp the way organisms evolve one from
another. He established a whole system for organisms.
That arose from the depths of the ego. But it is not
immediately compreshensible. People need something that
is easier to understand, they need things presented the
way they arise from the spiritual soul. So they did not
take up what Goethe had to offer but took up Darwin
[1809–1882]. We still have not reached the point
today where we are able to give recognition to Goethe's
Theory of Colours.
[Note 8]
Transposed into the spiritual soul in Newton's [1642–1727]
work it became what is currently accepted as the science of
physics.

These
things indicate the way in which individual, in this case
national, characters are facing one another. We rise
above the outer Maya which holds men captive and come to
the truth when we learn to look at things in the light of
spiritual science. We come to a truth that will show us
that just as individual soul forces are warring with each
other in a human being so the soul forces incorporated in
the folk souls are at war with each other. It is not by
chance that now in our day — when the teaching I
have just presented has emerged — war makes its
appearance as the great teacher, telling mankind in such
a bloody, such a terrible way the very thing we are also
telling them in spiritual terms. It is not by chance that
whilst we are able to discuss this here there rages
outside what is probably one of the bloodiest struggles
ever. Fundamentally speaking, it represents the same
truths but we must first penetrate them in their Maya to
understand them as they really are.

In speaking
about these things we must for once remove from the words
that are spoken every nuance of feeling, of sympathy or
antipathy, and use words merely for characterization.
Then we shall understand things rightly. For these are
things contained within the self of man, in so far as it
is wrapped in the national element. We can follow this
through in detail. To begin with, to prepare for what we
must come to understand, let me say the following.

Let us take
a Central European living in the ego culture. In my
public lecture I said that the Central European aspires
to his god in such a way that he will be joined to him.
He wants to be united with his god. With regard to the
thinking process, we can make the I generally say:
‘Man thinks’. Yet the statement ‘Man
thinks’ really says very little indeed. We need to
learn to look more carefully with the aid of spiritual
science. We must gradually learn not to speak
thoughtlessly but instead put things in the right way.
For people who do not really care about the reality of
things it is, of course, all right the way one just says
it, but it is right only to say: ‘the Central
European or Scandinavian thinks’ — with
‘thinking’ here considered an activity
because it is the evolving of thought that matters.
‘The ensouled being thinks’ — that is
what matters in Central Europe and in the Nordic
countries. Man is so bound up with thought that this
thought is the product of the soul's own activity, that
the soul's activity consists of nothing else but the soul
being caught up in thought.

The same
cannot be rightly said for the Frenchman. In that case we
have to say: ‘He has thoughts’. For
‘thinking’ and ‘having thoughts’
are not the same — there is a subtle difference. My
Riddles of Philosophy
can help to make this
clear. In Western Europe people have thoughts. Thoughts
are something that comes; they are given just as sensory
perceptions are given. That is how it is with thoughts.
They enter into the soul, they are fully alive in it,
people have them, even grow intoxicated with them, are
delighted to have them. One accusation made against the
Germans is that their thoughts show a certain coldness.
That may well be. A German has to form them first in his
individual soul. They need to be warmed through there and
only stay warm for as long as they are part of the
immediate activity.

So much in
preparation. For, indeed, the expression of individual
national characteristics will always be found to show
something coming alive that has already been put forward
in the principles of spiritual science, something you
will find in my lectures on folk souls. Let us consider
individual expressions of national character.

The Italian
and the Spanish character is determined by the sentient
soul. We can observe this in life down to the finer
detail. Everywhere we come upon the sentient soul. (This
does not, of course, refer to life in the higher self.)
As soon as a native of those countries is wholly within
his national element he is within the sentient soul. This
is particularly attached to everything connected with
home and sensitive to everything that is not home but,
rather, ‘alien country’. If you try, for
instance, to understand all that is part of the national
element in Italy you will find that an Italian sees
another person who is not Italian as a foreigner who
lives abroad. All the struggles that took place in Italy
during the 19th century had specifically to do with home
territory. Here we have a recapitulation of
Egypto-Chaldean culture.

Next let us
consider the people of Western Europe, those living on
French soil. (Remember, we need to rid ourselves of
anything to do with sympathy and antipathy.) They are
recapitulating Greek civilization. Their attitude to
someone from another country will be like that of the
Greeks — they will call him a barbarian. Greek
civilization is recapitulated here. We can understand
this even if the wildest feelings of antipathy are
raging. There always is a nuance present of the way
people in ancient Greece considered non-Greeks.

The English
people have the specific mission to nurture the spiritual
soul and this comes to full expression in materialism.
Here we specially need to rid ourselves of all antipathy.
The nurturing of materialism results in men being simply
positioned next to each other in space. This is something
that was not experienced in the past: awareness of the
rival. The spiritual soul is conscious of another person
as its rival in physical life.

What is the
situation as regards the Central Europeans, including the
Scandinavians? It would be most interesting to go into
full detail of this another time. What does a German feel
when face to face with another national, in the position
where the Italian sees the foreigner, the Frenchman the
barbarian and the Englishman his rival? One needs to find
the pregnant phrase always for these things. A German
faces his opponent — this may also be in a duel and
may have nothing at all to do with any feeling of
antipathy even — it is merely an matter of fighting
for existence or for something connected with one's
existence. The enemy need not be denigrated in the least.
Again it is possible to observe this even in fine detail.
This war in particular shows how the German national
faces his enemy as though in a duel.

Let us now
turn to the East. We have spoken of the sentient soul
coming into its own on the two southern peninsulas, the
intellectual or mind soul among the French, the spiritual
soul in the British Isles. In Central Europe and up north
in Scandinavia the national element comes into its own in
the I, the ego. It shows differentiation between
different regions but overall is experienced by what is
called the ego soul. As I have said, it lives as
spirit-self in the East. How do we characterize the
spirit-self? It approaches man, comes down upon him. In
the ego, man is striving. In the three soul aspects, man
is also striving. The spirit-self on the other hand
descends. It will one day descend upon the East as a true
spirit-self. These things are true, as we have often
said. But it needs preparation, preparation to the effect
that the soul conceives, that it becomes well versed in
its conceiving.

Surely the
Russian people have done nothing else so far but conceived.
We have had the works of Soloviev, the greatest Russian
philosopher, translated within our movement.
[Note 9]
If we consider his works in depth we find that it is all
Western European culture and philosophy. It is a little
different because it has been born out of the Russian
folk soul. What is it that is approaching in the Russian
soul in contradistinction to western European culture?
Italy and Spain are a recapitulation of the third
post-Atlantean epoch, the French people a recapitulation
of the culture of ancient Greece. The Briton shows the
new element that has come in, something we very
definitely acquire on the physical plane. In Central
Europe it is the ego that has to emerge clearly. In
Russia we have receptiveness, conception. First it was
Byzantine Christianity that was received, descending like
a cloud and then spreading. And western European culture
was received even during the reign of Peter the Great
[1672–1725]. At present, one would say, only the
material basis for conception is there. What we do have
there is a reflection of Western European culture, and
the soul's work consists in preparing itself for
conception, making itself receptive. The Russian
folk-soul will only be in its right element when it
realizes that Western European elements have to be
received the same way as the ancient Germans, for
instance, received the Christian faith, or the way the
Germanic people took in Greek culture through Goethe. It
will be a while yet. The physical element in the people
of the East is reacting against the things that need to
be taken in, and so the East is still resisting what will
be coming towards it. The spirit-self has to descend.

The element
coming across from the West is not the spirit-self
— but the soul uses it, in a way, to prepare, to
practise, receptiveness. And how does a Russian see
another national? As someone who stands in opposition,
someone descending upon his consciousness. And so the
person who is a foreigner to the Italian, a barbarian to
the Frenchman, a rival to the Briton and an opponent to
the German is a heretic in Russia. That is why,
fundamentally speaking, the Russians have only fought
religious wars until now — all their wars have so
far been religious wars. The aim was to liberate all
nations or bring them to the Christian faith — the
Balkan countries and so on. And even now Russian country
people feel the other person to be ‘evil’
incarnate. They see the other person as a heretic and
always believe they are fighting for the faith —
even today! These things are true down into detail and we
come to understand them if we are truly willing really to
look into things. And so we may also ask what it is we
see confronting us in the East of Europe.

The way he
is in physical life, man is in a way unjust to his higher
self. Someone living in the intellectual or mind soul, a
person whose imagination is particularly well developed,
will ‘have’ thoughts. The concept of how he
should appear to himself, in so far as he is a particular
national, presents itself before his higher self. He
feels that it is his glory; a third self as it were, a
national self which stands between him as a higher self
and as a national person. He fights on the basis of this.
After death he first of all has to be overcome this
unless he has already overcome it beforehand through
spiritual science. He must pass through something that
first of all presents itself to his soul as the
Inspiration of his own image of himself.

Someone
living in the spiritual soul as a national will above all
be inclined towards the things the spiritual soul has
made its own in the physical world. This will be like a
grievous memory in the world that lies between death and
rebirth.

The Central
European is a seeker. This is evident even from
derogatory remarks made by his enemies who may say he is
fit only to plough the fields and search among the
clouds. However far he may have advanced, he is, even
here, seeking the self in. spirit. In the efforts he
makes during his progress on earth he will therefore, in
a sense, try already get rid of whatever has to be got
rid of when we go through the gate of death and enter the
spiritual world.

Someone who
has been in a Russian body during his last incarnation
must first of all, on passing through the gate of death,
assume the consciousness of an angelos, merge
into the inner being of an angelos —
unless he has gone through a different preparation with
spiritual science — and share in all that comes
down from the hierarchies above him.

All these
are reasons why we may say that if we look to the West of
Europe it seems natural that strife arises out of the
very nature of men in so far as they are nationals, for
the national element is connected with something that is
an outer covering. It is quite natural for strife to
arise. In the spiritual world anything that rightfully
belongs there can spread without hindrance. But external
means have to be used to assert the image one has of
oneself. It needs to be able to spread in order to
emerge. Anything looking for competition must of course
be able to spread. It is perfectly understandable that
strife comes from the people who represent the spiritual
soul. If we are really seeking the I, the ego, in Central
Europe, let us see if the qualities of the ego can
already be brought to bear.

I have
already stressed, for example, that the ego needs to be
fanned to life again every morning. It is in an unaroused
state when we enter into the sphere of sleep with it and
needs to be fanned to life again every morning when we
wake up. If I may refer to Austria — I heard it
said even when I was young that Austria would one day
fall apart when occasion arose. We knew different; it
might have any amount of centrifugal force within it but
it was held together from outside, it could not fall
apart. Let us consider Germany. Does it show the ego
character in its outer aspect, in its form? It is a fact
of considerable import that for much of a century the
Germans have pressed for unification. They did not
achieve this from the inside. It took an external
impulse, not from inside Germany but from outside, from
the centre of France, to let the Germany of today come
into being in accord with the ego character. We can only
understand the world if we consider it in the light of
spiritual science. Fundamentally speaking, the ego does
not have the inclination to hit out; for the overweening
forces from the physical plane would then go over into
the spiritual sphere. This is something we could
demonstrate over and over again in German history, in the
history of Austria and the history of the Scandinavian
peoples. The feeling is right, therefore, that a German,
or a Central European, has to be made to come out in war.
Fundamentally speaking, he is unable to start a war of
his own accord. If he goes to war out of initiative, he
does it the way the initiative does it in the ego, and
there have of course been such wars in the interior. That
is what we must feel the attitude of Central Europe to
war to be.

And what
emerges in the East for someone able to get a feeling for
national character? For the Russian it is the most
unnatural thing in the world to wage war. If he were to
know himself he would feel it to be most unnatural for
him to wage war. We of the West cannot become Tolstoyans,
however well we understand all things Russian. But for
the Russian it is unnatural to wage war. War has to be
imposed on him, for it is totally against the national
character. A Russian feels towards war the way he feels
about religious war — it is something coming from
outside. War cannot be made plausible to him for he would
rather pray for what is to come to him. It is therefore
quite natural to look for the motives that causes
Russians to go to war not in the national character but
in the motives imposed on them from outside. More than
anywhere else we have to say in this case that it is not
the people who make war — it is the people only in
an external sense and seemingly — but rather
whatever it is that they have to turn against most of
all. In Russia war is always a 'Maya', illusion, in the
worst sense. This is why we can state clearly and
precisely what I posed as a question in my public
lecture: Who could have prevented the war? — If we
actually want to talk of the possibility of its being
prevented. — For the French, war has been something
natural since 1871 and it would not be natural to speak
of their being able to prevent it. Anyone forced to fight
his rivals naturally does not have the right to be
indignant when neutrality has been breached in some place
or other, and in this case the indignation needs to be
reinterpreted into the national element. But it is
natural for him to go to war. We cannot take that amiss.
In that case war can no more be rejected than when, in
interpreting the nature of living creatures, one has to
find a different phrase out of the element of the
spiritual soul than from the the standpoint of the ego
and therefore speaks of the 'struggle for survival'.
Goethe did not coin that phrase, because from the ego
point of view it does not apply. But where it is a
question of war being a falsehood, where it even has to
be reinterpreted first into a religious war, there we
have to say that it has risen externally and therefore
could also have been prevented externally. Looking into
all the depths one is able to look into—the war has
indeed been a necessity but that is another
thing—we have to say: It is true that Russia could
have stayed an onlooker, and the war could have been
prevented. If Russia had remained an onlooker the war
could have been prevented. For here a war has been
grafted onto a national character when basically it is
something quite unnatural.

Such
things, as we speak about them, come from the spiritual
world. They arise from it. But it is always possible to
verify them, to confirm them, in the outside world.
Anything we arrive at out of the spiritual world finds
confirmation in the outside world. We could say that it
would be a natural gesture for the Russian national
character to pray and wait for what is to come. It is
very strange; even Russian intellectuals are waiting in
expectancy — I have already referred to this
— in the feeling that something belonging to the
future has to come towards them. What will have to come
for them still lies far ahead in the future and we have
seen how there is refusal to accept what has to be taken
up now. It is perhaps more than just an outer symbol that
now, when battles are being fought on the Black Sea, the
Russian still looks in that direction — to see an
embodiment, as it were, of what he may expect in the
spirit — pointing to the Hagia Sophia.
[Note 10]
Merezhkovsky [1865–1941] describes two visits he has made to the
Hagia Sophia. He felt the Hagia Sophia to be the outer
symbol, as it were, of something he did not know in his
feelings but was expecting, and he called it the
Christianity that is to come for the Russians. He would
have seen it rightly if he had realized that it is a
Christian faith that has gone through the Faust nature
which will have to take hold of the Russian people. But
that is something he does not yet know. He believes it is
the Hagia Sophia which represents it. What is his
attitude to the Christian faith? If we consider what
Soloviev has to say on this, then I am able to say that
he shows a certain understanding of it. For when problems
were once again created for him by St Petersburg and the
Holy Synod, he said: ‘Ah, that is how you fare when
you have problems in getting them to understand what you
want to say. The one side calls me a liberal Western
European atheist, the other an orthodox believer, and
others again even consider me a Jesuit.’ He
concluded by saying: ‘Amazing what you can turn
into when seen through the eyes of the Petersburg
blackguards.’ These are not my words but those of a
good Russian citizen, a Russian who shows us that it is
not easy to rid oneself of feelings of sympathy or
antipathy. But let us assume the Russian intellectual is
left to himself. As I said, it is a world of expectancy,
a natural mood of looking for what is to come, something
not to be achieved with the sword and with cannon. That
is why the Pan-Slavonic movement is such a lie. Left to
himself, Merezhkovsky gave himself up to his feelings
when face to face with the Hagia Sophia. He did however
confuse it with the Christian faith of the Western
European which has gone through the strivings of Faust.
And how does he speak of it?

I have
tried to find a succinct formulation for the feelings
different nations may be seen to have towards war, saying
that a Russian believes he is going to war for the sake
of religion, an Englishman for competition, a Frenchman
for the glory, an Italian or Spaniard for his homeland
and a German to fight for existence. And we are therefore
able to say that Italy wants to preserve the homeland;
France conceives of its own idea of [glory] as the
national ideal; the Englishman takes action and does
business
[Note 11]
the German aspires; the Russian prays — and that comes
naturally. I am not speaking of external prayer, for it
is a matter of the heart. What was it then Merezhkovsky
said at the end of his book, which I mentioned the day
before yesterday?
[Note 12]

The Hagia
Sophia — brilliant, sad and flooded with the
amber-coloured light of ultimate mystery — lifted
up my soul which had fallen and was frightened. I
looked up into the dome that is like the vault of
heaven, and I thought: There it stands, made by the
hand of man, and in it men are coming close to the
triune god on earth. This close approach has been made
and more still of this shall come in time to be. Surely
those who believe in the Son must come to the Father
who is the world. And surely those must come to the Son
who love the world, which the Father also loved so much
that he gave his Son for it. For they offer their souls
for him and for their friends; they have the Son
because they have Love, only they do not know the
name.

They do not
have it as a whole. And he concluded:

And I
felt impelled to pray for them all, in the temple that
at this hour belongs to the heathen but is the only
temple for the future, to pray that my people be given
that true, conquering strength: pray for conscious
belief in the triune god.

So there
you have the prayer. There you have the anomaly of a
fight that goes from East to West.

In making
this attempt to gain inner understanding of what meets us
here, in attempting to escape from Maya and enter into
the truth, we can indeed say to ourselves that were are
not pursuing an abstract anthroposophy that is afraid to
see. For it would be fear of seeing the truth if we were
to shrink from seeing national characters in their true
foundations, because of our ‘First
Principle.’
[Note 13]
We are exactly following that Principle if we
approach man as he is and endeavour really to look into
his soul. Then we are most of all addressing the immortal
aspect of man and we shall then also find the part of him
that goes beyond the national, that goes towards the
eternal, and the fine feelings that turn to the eternal
in man. And then we shall find a way of bringing about
what after all has to be brought about. For do you think
progress and the good of mankind will not suffer if the
temper now prevailing among nations is to persist?
Tempers which in any case are merely born out of Maya?
From the point of view of the necessity which demands
that men get to understand one another again, that there
shall be a continuation of what in a certain sense had
already been started, arising from Central Europe, it is
essential that this atmosphere we live in — a
spiritual atmosphere that is one of such dreadful tumult
today— receives also other elements into it and not
only those of tumult. We cannot help but sense, if we
have entered into spiritual life, the tumult that exists
in the spiritual atmosphere today. The more deeply one
has entered, the more one will be sensitive to this.
Profoundly disturbing things may arise out of the
spiritual life. The occultist has been able to learn
much, but never has so much been experienced that was so
deeply disturbing and has such impact as in the last
three months.

Many is the
time I have stressed the occult truth that things
presenting themselves one way in the physical world are
the opposite by nature in the spiritual world. Some of
our friends will also be able to recall how often I have
said that war was hanging in the spiritual air and was
really only being held off by something which is a
spiritual impulse also in physical life — by fear.
Force of fear held it back for as long as it was astral
by nature. Fear stopped it from breaking out earlier.
Externally speaking, the war started of course with the
assassination in Sarajevo. That, too, has its
significance. That is what is so disturbing in this
affair. We are among ourselves here, and so it must also
be possible to say these things. The individual
personality who was murdered on that clay [Archduke
Francis Ferdinand of Austria, assassinated on 28 June
1914] and went through the gate of death afterwards
presented an appearance I had never before seen myself
nor heard described by others. I have on several
occasions described the appearance of souls as they pass
through the gate of death. This soul however showed a
peculiar feature. It was like a centre of
crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear
elements crystallizing around it, as it were, until war
broke out. Afterwards it showed itself to be something
quite different. Where before it had been a great cosmic
force attracting all fear, it had then become something
that was the opposite. The fear which had prevailed here
on the physical plane had held everybody back. But once
this soul had ascended to the spiritual plane it acted in
the opposite way, bringing war.

It
profoundly disturbs the soul to experience such things.
And there are many such things that now exist within the
heaving swell of the astral impulses that rise up into
the spiritual world from the hearts and minds of men. And
among ourselves I am able to say that I have never
experienced anything like the things I experienced in
these last months, something that stirred up the waves in
human souls to such a dreadful extent. From this it is of
course apparent what is going on in the spiritual
atmosphere. And if that which has to be in the spiritual
atmosphere is indeed to come about, thoughts must enter
into that atmosphere that can only arise from souls that
have grasped the spiritual world. Pleading with utmost
passion, therefore, your souls are asked to conceive
ideas, ideas we try to stimulate with reflections like
those of today or of the last occasion. These are ideas
arising from spiritual insight and only souls that have
gone through spiritual science are able to send such
thoughts up into the spiritual world. The souls will need
such thoughts now whilst war is in progress, and even
more so afterwards. For thoughts are reality!

The great
wish is to send the most fervent prayer into the
spiritual world that whatever arises out of this war and
after it may originate not from human Maya but from the
truth and from spiritual reality. The more you send such
thoughts up into the spiritual world the more you are
doing for what shall be the fruit of these worldwide
struggles, and the more you are doing for what is needed
for the whole evolution of mankind.

This
prayer, then, shall be the culmination of all I intended
to present to your souls with these thoughts. If the
questions we have considered have truly entered into our
souls, if our souls, as souls that have now lived in
spiritual science, allow to stream up into the spiritual
world that which brings peace to man. then our spiritual
science has stood the test in these fateful times. It
will have stood the test to the effect that our fighters
out there have not in vain given full rein to their
courage; that the blood of battle has not flowed in vain.
Then the suffering of those who mourn, the sacrifices
which have been made, will not have been in vain in the
world. Then spirit fruit will grow out of these fateful
days, all the more so to the extent human beings are able
to send thoughts like those I have indicated up into the
spiritual world.

I want to
make it clear that the words I am about to speak form a
sevenfold structure, making a kind of mantram. Please
note that in the last but one line the words
‘Lenken Seelen’ should be taken to
mean ‘wenn Seelen lenken’ (if souls
turn).

This is
what I wanted to put before you: that these events, which
speak so much of reality, appear in the right light to us
if we rise above Maya and to the true reality. Oh, the
souls will be found that are able to see our present time
in that way. Souls will be found if they are found also
in the sense Krishna was teaching
[Note 14]
with regard to
warrior-souls. And if it should truly prove possible for
souls that have gone through spiritual science to send
thoughts to fructify the spirit up into the spiritual
world in these difficult, fateful days, then the right
fruit will develop out of all that is happening in those
hard struggles and cruel sacrifices. And so I am able to
let the things I wanted to put before your souls today
culminate in what I would so much like to see as the
state of consciousness, the innermost consciousness, of
souls that have gone through spiritual science:

Out of courage shown in
battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.